


Tap three times it means 'I love you'

by the_consulting_linguist (xASx)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack - a little tiny bit, Cuddling & Snuggling, Declarations Of Love, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Lazy Mornings, M/M, Morning Cuddles, rainy mornings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 01:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15402348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xASx/pseuds/the_consulting_linguist
Summary: Sherlock finds it difficult to say 'I love you' to John. Until he admits that he has discovered another way.





	Tap three times it means 'I love you'

**Author's Note:**

  * For [threadoflife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/threadoflife/gifts).



“John. Coffee”, Sherlock mumbled as he took his seat across the table and placed a steaming mug in front of him.

“Thank you” John smiled groggily and lifted the mug to his lips. He blew over the dark liquid, turning its surface to ripples, then tiny folds with the last strength of his breath.

Sherlock rubbed the back of his neck, yawning, his jaw crackling with the force of it, his arms stretching above his head, elbows curving that tiny bit inwards, giving the entire movement a soft arch like a cat’s spine.

Silence stretched over them, punctured by the pitter-patter of rain as it met with the windows and the old walls of 221B.

“What time do we have to be at the Yard?”, John’s voice reached him as if through bare, dry branches; hoarse and with gaps in the voicing, like Morse code.

Sherlock looked towards him. Slouched shoulders. John never slouched. Head propped up on a fist resting against his cheek, so that it gathered the skin of it up against his cheekbone. Dried lips. The lower one was cut in the middle, a small red line. It was not bleeding now, but it had been last night. Two small grey pebbles of dark circles beneath sunken-in eyes and two-day stubble peppered on cheeks and chin and jaw. Skin that had turned ashen with lack of rest, and food, and sleep. He had a cowlick, and some tufts flying rampant over his eyes, and he could only keep only one eye at a time open.

 _Tap tap tap.:_ Index and middle fingers drumming silently on the scratched wood of the kitchen table.

“So?”

Sherlock picked up his cup of tea, forgotten until then, and stood. “Lestrade can wrap it up”, he said, waving a dismissive hand.

“But it’s an 8”, John’s eyebrows raised.

“And I’m bored”, Sherlock replied flippantly, trudging back to the bedroom with a sleepy gait, like a disoriented puppy. “I feel like staying in bed and doing skincare today. Coming?”

“You utter madman”, John called after him with a chuckle.

 _Tap tap tap,_ index and middle fingers against the flap of his robe.

***

John found Sherlock curled up under the covers, only a handful of inky curls showing against the pillow, like an untamed, overgrown shrub. It was a habit of his madman to burrow himself until he was almost entirely invisible. ‘Afraid of the monster under the bed?’, he had asked once; they had been watching a film, or rather John had, laptop on his thighs with Sherlock a mass of comforter, blanket, sheet beneath him. A grumpy consulting boulder. ‘No, mine lives in the closet’, Sherlock had retorted with a snort. ‘And it’s probably a skeleton’.

The humour had surprised John not because Sherlock was incapable of it. On the contrary, he had a good flavor for it, if not in a cruel or too sulky mood where it turned more dripping viper’s fang than his usual phlegmatic one-liners. But this was light-hearted and not self-deprecating. It was instead honest in a blunt way John was not used to; Sherlock admitting to having monsters. They had come a long way from the barricade of ‘I’m a high-functioning sociopath’. A long way from John ever thinking for a second, even the most troublesome, impossible, infuriating one, that Sherlock was a machine. They had rather entered the territory of ‘I have spent my entire life under the premise of being a freak and I am currently a little lost, please help me?’.

They had entered that territory slowly, but when its borders were crossed, neither could say. They just found themselves with the knowledge one morning like any other, Sherlock whining about lack of cases and John trying not to burn his fingers in the toaster while he pretended to ignore the tantrum. But that knowledge had been incubating in their hearts for a while. And when they looked into each other’s eyes and saw they both knew, and they were on the same page, they grasped it, and tended to it so that it would grow more. Grow into a bridge, a path out of the mess their lives had become before they found their way to each other.

***

Sherlock pulled the covers down to his shoulders. His eyes were slits, he could barely open them more. He held the edge of the covers with one hand and lifted it as invitation for John to crawl underneath and join him.

John rolled his eyes. “Why did you give me coffee if you only wanted us to get back to bed? Why get us up in the first place? Couldn’t that mind of yours have decided earlier?”, he ranted, but he did not truly mean it. His voice was whiny and soft, conspiratorial in its mock accusations. Trying to make him laugh.

Sherlock’s lips tugged upwards into a smile. _Tap tap tap,_ just one finger this time, onto the navy-blue sheet.

“Shut up and come here”, he slurred.

John did with no further hesitation. He crawled close enough that they were chest to chest, with his head buried in Sherlock’s neck. The hand with which Sherlock was holding the covers released its grip, and the blankets landed atop and about them with a sigh. Sherlock’s arm crept beneath the layers of fabric again and searched for the indentation of John’s waist, where it curled, pulling his man even closer to him.

John fitted a knee between Sherlock’s thighs. Sherlock’s ankles hooked around John’s other leg. John’s arm found its own way around Sherlock’s waist. And the hands whose sides they were lying on, met between their bodies and held each other tight.

In the relative darkness the cocoon of covers provided, Sherlock breathed a kiss on John’s forehead, John’s lips latched onto Sherlock’s adam’s apple. Their breaths, alternating at first, took turns to make each chest swell into the small free space between them. And then they evened out, and fell into pace, rising and falling, curtains billowing in summer breeze, to meet each other.

“Please tell me you’re not going to change your mind”, John whispered.

“Mmmaybe?”, Sherlock’s voice twinkled.

The rainfall continued outside, drowning the engines of the vehicles passing by, of the radiator gurgling, of Mrs. Hudson’s hoovering downstairs.

“God, I love you”, John growled, stretching his legs just as much as Sherlock’s would allow him and getting comfortable again.

 _Tap tap tap,_ silent against John’s spine.

***

Of course, how they had entered the territory of the grand realization of their relationship being much more than friendship had been another story entirely. It had included not one, but two identity crises -one before the coming out, and one right after it-, and three Sherlockian panic attacks. These were peppered amidst the events of a divorce, and the dealing with an ex-assassin ex-wife with nothing but not-good intentions. Ah, and included a failed honeymoon, after a big, fat, ‘oh shit why is everyone saying the best man is in love with the groom and then why the heck am I marrying Mary’ wedding.

It had ben intense, if nothing else; them admitting to the need to be together. And John coming to terms with being bisexual. In fact, he was still coming to terms with it. Not that he’d ever been actively homophobic -he had a lesbian sister, after all- but nursing a confused sense of masculinity and fending off a toxic fear of anything too-gay was not aided too much by his boyfriend’s larger than life camp sass. Or maybe it was. Well. What can John Watson do but cope. What else can he do when said boyfriend, lover, best friend, partner, can make him feel his chest is a skywards-bent balloon with only a look? When this madman of a genius is finally his, his, and only his?

***

“I love you”, John breathed into Sherlock’s neck.

Sherlock pushed and prodded John until he could make him turn around. He curled around him, an effectively taller big spoon, and mouthed at John’s ear. John hummed.

The quiet bliss was interrupted by thermoregulation issues. It was too warm beneath the covers. Enough to warrant that Sherlock kick at them until his feet could be free from their constrains, toes flexing with bliss in the cool air, like the paws of a cat. 

“Oi, stop giving the bed an earthquake”, John whined, but Sherlock knew it was good-natured.

Sherlock groaned and pressed his lips onto John’s nape. John’s hair there was matted with sweat. Sherlock nuzzled, breathing in the unique combination of musk, tea, wool, and cheap white soap. His heart was doing weird things in his chest.

“Can you say it again?”, he blurted out.

“What?”, John’s groggy voice sounded genuinely confused.

“The… thing…?”, Sherlock murmured, burying his face at the back of John’s head and curling his shoulders inwards. His lower lip was caught between his teeth and was being nibbled mercilessly.

“’I love you’?”, John ventured.

Sherlock nodded, a small whimper ringing in his throat. There was nothing but silence and the rhythmic marching of rain for some moments.

“I love you”, John affirmed, taking one of Sherlock’s hands in his own and kissing the bony knuckles. “I love you”

Sherlock’s lip broke free to join a smile. The clouds that had begun to find a way through the windows and over his eyes scattered.

 _Tap, tap, tap,_ the twitching of fingers into a gentle palm’s grip.

***

The first time John had said ‘I love you’, Sherlock let the empty teacup he was holding drop to the floor and shatter. He did not even wince at the sound of it smashing. He only blinked, slowly, then rapidly, eyelids fluttering like the wings of an indecisive moth which debating when to land.

Of course, when he had managed to come around, he had denied any shock to John. He had said he had been mildly surprised, and that his mind palace had done that thing again, where he _thought_ he was speaking out loud, but it would turn out he wasn’t.

He has no idea if John ever believed him.

But whatever fears had crept up for him having ruined the moment and become decisively undeserving of such declarations ever again where hushed when John did not stop saying it. On the contrary. John would say it again and again, during the months to come. When they’d be having breakfast, lunch, dinner. When waking up or going to sleep. When Sherlock spoke, when Sherlock had not said a word. When Sherlock was being exceptionally good, when Sherlock was being frustrating. When making love, when just cuddling. In any and every occasion, John had said ‘I love you’.  And every time, it was like a tiny silver arrow piercing his heart, like the thorn of a rose prickling his palm. It _hurt._ But it hurt in a _good_ way; the way that meant it was so good if it didn’t hurt he would have thought it was a dream or hallucination and would attempt to slap himself awake.

It was not the first time John’s love hurt in that good, best, honey-thick way. It hurt when John kissed him good-morning, when he called him sweetheart (and all manners of pet names which Sherlock had deemed unforgivably ridiculous before, moving on). And most of all it hurt when they’d make love, when John tried to fill every crack in his soul with everything he had always lacked.

Sherlock wanted to make John feel the same. Wanted to make him feel brimming with so much that his heart would clench and his eyes would tremble, that his nightmares would go away and his eyes be marked with laughter lines, that his breath would hitch and his knees go weak.

There was only one way for Sherlock to love John; overwhelmingly. Immensely.

He memorized the tiniest detail about him. The most miniscule quirk and habit, preference and dislike. The ways John laughed replaced his study in tobacco ash. John’s body was his temple of worship. John’s safety had his constant vigilance. John’s happiness his every effort.

But though the practical and physical ways of love he mastered and showed and craved, the three little words clogged up his throat and had to be choked down with cowardice and shame. He had even practiced saying it back, alone, in front of a mirror. ‘I love you, I love you, I love _you_ ’. It never worked.

It never worked, and Sherlock could not stop feeling like a failure -or that his head would explode with the need, visceral, primitive, urgent _need_ , to say it, admit it, shout it from the rooftops if he had to (on second thought, no, better no rooftops for his love declaration to John Watson). It crowded the breath in his lungs, clung onto his tongue, burned his palate. Nothing. Nothing. He simply couldn’t.

Of course, he had attempted to rationalize this. Multiple times, and insistently. Did three little words matter so much, after all? Was everything else that he was enthusiastically and eagerly and genuinely doing for John not enough, in the grand scheme of things? The answers were always ‘yes’, and ‘no’ respectively. Hoorah for consistency, and woe to him.

***

“Want to order or make something?”, John whispered against Sherlock’s neck.

“Mmm…”

Indecipherable a hum to everyone except one man, the one it was given to.

“Okay”, John smiled, brushing a hand over Sherlock’s curls. “Chinese or Thai?”

“Dunno”

“Thai”

Sherlock grinned at him under the covers. _Tap, tap, tap,_ on the sweaty, bare skin on John’s belly this time.

Clothes had been removed somewhere along the way. And a number of other things had ensued.

John smiled. Sherlock was intending to kiss his nose, but what took place was a lick instead.

“Oh you git!”, John giggled, pretending to be bothered, and then grabbed Sherlock’s hips and pushed him on his back, using the motion to roll on top of him. “Insufferable” he blew a raspberry on Sherlock’s collarbone. “-git”, another onto his sternum, “you”, one more onto the pale slim belly. Sherlock had burst in laughter, long legs wrapped around John’s thighs as his body squirmed and thrashed, hands onto John’s ribs, shoulder-blades, fluttering tapping breathlessly.

***

John had not been surprised when Sherlock did not say ‘I love you’ back. The first time. Or the next. And the next. He figured his genius had his reasons, and frankly, he was okay with it.  He knew Sherlock’s emotions reached deep, like water-hungry roots. And he felt them through every caress and smile, every utterance of his name, and every time Sherlock would let him have his way.

He recognized Sherlock’s love when he saw it -or he hoped he did, more often than not. It was often subtle enough to miss, and Sherlock himself often presented it as an afterthought, or something selfish. But John knew better; what lived inside Sherlock was not a difficulty to accept his humanity for pride’s sake, or for the Work’s sake. Sherlock was not incapable of love; for crying out loud, he flushed and preened every time John told him he loved him, or called him love or dear or sweetheart, but never dared return any such word back. Sherlock had been told that he was incapable, as he had been told that he was many other things he wasn’t. And he had taken it to heart and turned it both into pain for himself and an impenetrable wall to keep others out.

It had taken a while for John to understand that. But now that he did, he tried to help as their life together matured and grew. But the one thing he did not do, was wait. If Sherlock wanted, he would blurt it out whenever he felt like it. If he did not want, then John would say it enough times for the both of them, he would say it as many times as it took for Sherlock to believe that he was worthy of love. John did not need to hear the words back to be happy. He heard them in a million other ways every day.

***

“John?”

“Mmm?”

“I need to tell you something”

“You changed your mind. You want Chinese”

“No. Well, maybe”

“I knew it”

Sherlock nudged John’s side with his index in retaliation. He was lying on his side, his torso against John’s waist and hip as John had sat up with his back propped against stacked pillows, a book in his lap.

“But I really have something to tell you”

John looked at him and waited. Sherlock wondered how much longer until John’s patience grew thin, until the veil of infatuation and love hormones lifted. “It is about yesterday”

John’s eyebrows drew closer together, and worry lines sprang in a previously smooth forehead. “What about yesterday?”

“I thought Lestrade had told you…” But the lack of anger on John’s part could only be interpreted as ignorance.

John shifted, straightening his back against the pillows, and place the book on the bedside table.

“No, he didn’t”

“When I asked to split up…”

“You were with Greg, I was with the other officers, yes”, John prompted.

Sherlock could see impatience and fear stir inside him, crowd behind his darkening eyes.

“You were safe. Weren’t you? You had promised me”

Sherlock swallowed. “I was. I am”. He felt exposed lying down, then, being naked under John’s scrutiny. He sat up, pulled the sheet around his middle. He had found that some conversation could simply not be had in nothing but flesh, needing the distance and hiding place the peel clothing could provide.

“We had not had an 8 in a while. In fact, since…” This is how they referred to Mary, most of the times. ‘Since…’ A pause, an inclination of the head. And the other was meant to gather that this was the thing that was not to be talked about, the thing that had almost broken them both.

John nodded. His jaw had clenched.

“We have not had anything more than a 5 in a while. So when… When the adrenaline kicked in yesterday, when the world sharpened into focus, when the first shots were fired, I was afraid”

John’s eyes narrowed and blinked.

“I have been in life-threatening situations before. And I do not mock them anymore. Not after… After Serbia. But this was the first in a long while where you were with me. At the other side of that building. The balance of probability had the plan not worked, was fifty-fifty. Either you could have been killed, or me. But any fear for my safety was entirely obliterated the moment I realized what kind of danger you were in. John… The idea of harm coming to you scares me more than anything that could ever happen to me”.

***

John did his best to remember the scene, when the two teams met again at the front of the embassy, with the suspect successfully eliminated.

Sherlock’s cheeks had been pale, not the usual flush they flared on with the chase, his black curls wild atop his head. He had said nothing but had rushed to John’s side. He had taken his hand, and held tight, the black leather of his glove gluing to his palm with heat and sweat. John had squeezed. Sherlock had squeezed back.

They had taken a cab home, barely made it up the stairs in order to collapse in bed.

“We have been in dangerous situations before”, Sherlock was continuing. “And this fear for you has accompanied me through each and every one of them. This time was different. Before… before us, I did not carry the same weight I do now”

John wanted to reach for Sherlock’s hand again, to keep him afloat whatever storm it was that he was trying to weather. But he knew better than to interrupt now.

Sherlock breathed in time with the rain, John could almost feel its cool caress on their skin. A raven-black lock had fallen over Sherlock’s left eye, keeping it hidden. John brushed it behind a pink, seashell ear.

“Then… Before… There were things inside me which I thought I was not allowed to share, or even feel”, Sherlock murmured. John saw the roots through the pale skin, tangled and mingling with his veins.

“But last night I knew… I knew that me not voicing them was selfish. The thought of never having said them, of losing every opportunity to paralyzed me. You have been through impossible situations, John, and yet you chose to be here, with me. The notion of me not giving you enough, not giving you what you deserve… I don’t want to feel it again”

John stayed still as the storm grew.

“The thing… _The_ thing. You deserve to hear it, John. You deserve to be with someone who can give it to you in its every facet” Sherlock brought his skinny knees to his chest, rested his chin atop them. He looked small like this, with the pout over his lips and his boyish curls. He bore that kind of innocence that was raw, and confused, and so different than the world they lived in; it stood out, pale and lost, a remnant of childhood dreams and endless summer afternoons.

Thunder broke outside, and realization bloomed with it in John’s chest.  “You mean… You feel inadequate because you have not told me you love me?”

Sherlock winced, and the lip he was worrying between his teeth tore and bled. “Yes”

John sighed. He edged closer, until he could bring an arm around Sherlock’s shoulders and guide the taller man to lean his weight against him. “Sherlock… I _know_ you love me”

Bewildered grey eyes searched for his at once. “You… do?”

“Of course I do. You show me -you _tell_ me- every day. You are not inadequate for not saying it out loud”

“But… You gave up so much for me. Because of me-“

“What, an ex-assassin and a cane?”, John chuckled. “Sherlock… I am not here expecting from you anything more than you are”

Sherlock nodded, and lay his head onto John’s shoulder, his limbs loosening up, drawn to curling towards John like sunflowers to their sun.

“And is… is what I am… enough?”

“What do you think?”

“I think I will never be enough, John”, Sherlock whispered, his naturally bass voice even lower.

John cupped his face, guiding his stubborn man to look at him. “Then we’ll work on that. Sherlock… you are the one for me and I will not stop telling you until you believe it”

“What if… What if I can never say it?”, Sherlock murmured into the warmth of John’s palm as he kissed it.

“Then, so what”, John shrugged with a smile. But Sherlock’s expression was sour, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Sherlock… Do you want to say it?”

“Yes”

“Okay. But you don’t _have_ to. Do you believe me?”

“Yes. But I want to”

“Are you ready to?”

There was a pause. Sherlock broke free from John’s hold and looked straight ahead, toward the window. The curtain was pulled back, giving them the view of a full-bellied pale sky.

“No”, Sherlock admitted, his shoulders sagging.

“Do you want to tell me why?”, John tried, rubbing his palm up and down Sherlock’s spine. He could feel each vertebra, a series of knuckles poking through the skin.

“I am afraid”

John nodded.

“You know you can tell me anyway you choose, right? Like I told you… I feel you tell me with everything you do, and it counts. But if you want a specific thing to mean that, to mean I love you between us, and only the two of us will know, then go ahead”

Sherlock’s eyes shone at that, sunrays peeking through the barrier of grey cotton-clouds.

“There is something”

***

John was looking at him eagerly.

“Say it”, Sherlock said, and his cheeks were naked flames.

“Say what?”

“The _thing_ , John!”

“Oh, right”

Sherlock’s breaths were punched from his chest way too fast.

John turned his body sideways, so he could see him better and smiled. “I love you”

 _Tap tap tap,_ Sherlock’s index onto John’s knee.

Neither of them moved, both sets of eyes fixed on that tiny movement.

“I love you”, John said again, more slowly. Sherlock’s tapping followed the rhythm of his voice. “I love you”, John said again, and excitement rolled like a wave in his tone. Again, Sherlock tapped in time.

“You’ve been doing this for a while, haven’t you?”

Sherlock bit his lip again.

“Did you know?”

“No. Not really. But I had seen it. Is that how you meant it?”

Sherlock nodded.

“How?”

“I just started to the melody of your intonation. Every time you would say it to me. I suppose I wanted to catch the words in my hands, somehow. And then it just… It became easier. It became a way. I was afraid to tell you”

John stared at him, for a long while. He held his chin up with one hand, enough so that their gazes could remain locked together.

“You brilliant man of mine. Do you know how amazing you are?”

“John”, Sherlock rebuked softly, but John would not let him go, even though he must have turned an unflattering crimson. Consulting tomato.

But instead of John saying anything he tapped on Sherlock’s wrist with his finger. _Tap tap tap._

“So… If you tap three times, it means ‘I love you’”, he said, decidedly. Sherlock was eager to tap again in reply. Their very own Morse Code.

“Me too”, John soothed, pressing his lips onto Sherlock’s. One, two, three pecks. “Alright?”

Sherlock nodded, what was bound to be a very goofy smile permanently etched onto his lips.

“Good. Now, is it Chinese or Thai, you got to help me here”, John said, scooting to the edge of the bed to get up.

Sherlock whined in protest and threw both arms around John’s waist to stop him. They could get up and eat, face the world, buy milk (they were running out, again, and no chance he’d go to the store to buy more on his own, with all that rain). But it could wait. It could all wait.

“Can we stay in bed? Just a little more?”

John huffed and tapped Sherlock's nose, which scrunched up childishly. One, two, three times.

Sherlock tapped back.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
